


The Piercing Blade

by Masu_Trout



Category: Naruto
Genre: Attempted Kidnapping, Eye Gouging, Gen, Protective Team, Rescue Missions, Time Travelling Badass Haruno Sakura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26370184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Kumogakure, Sakura thinks, staring at Naruto's captors. Not out of character, but—unexpected. Has she already changed enough to cause ripples like this, a kidnapping where none had originally happened? Or had this been a part of Naruto's childhood all along, and it was just that no one ever mentioned it to her?The problem with changing the timeline is that it never just affects the things youwantto change. Sakura, eleven years old again, finds herself thwarting the kidnapping of her classmate and closest not-yet-friend—and, thanks to that, dealing with Hatake Kakashi, whomayhave witnessed her kill two grown men andmaybe convinced she's a dangerous enemy spy.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi
Comments: 14
Kudos: 183
Collections: We Die Like Fen 4: We Lived to Die Afen, We die afen and afen





	The Piercing Blade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mornelithe_falconsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mornelithe_falconsbane/gifts).



There's two adult men in the clearing: broad-shouldered, bodies brimming with chakra, both of them wearing headbands that declare them to be missing-nin from Hidden Mist. That's a lie, of course—their energy _feels_ electric, like the eerie calm before a storm rolls in, and even from a glimpse it's obvious their hands bear the kind of thick callouses that could only come from a lifetime spent among the mountains.

 _Kumogakure_ , Sakura thinks. Not out of character, but—unexpected. Has she already changed enough to cause ripples like this, a kidnapping where none had originally happened? Or had this been a part of Naruto's childhood all along, and it was just that no one had ever mentioned it to her?

It could easily be the second. I's not like anyone would have told an untrained eleven-year-old academy student anything about jinchuriki, let alone that their village had very nearly lost theirs. And it's equally unlikely that Naruto—kind to a fault, cheery, always looking forward—would have told her about something like this in his past unless he had reason to. 

Sakura wants to believe it's the second. If it is, there's already someone coming to rescue him; she doesn't need to step in at all. But when she flares her chakra just a hint, enough to sense without being sensed, she can feel the two men in the clearing, another two shinobi up in the trees with an unconscious, flickering chakra signature she knows as well as she knows her own heartbeat held between them—and no one else. No rescuer from Konoha, no team in the distance waiting to save him.

She sighs, and pressed her too-small hands to her too-fragile head, running them down her face.

No choice but to assume it's the first. Which means she's got no choice but take these four on all by herself, with nothing but a eleven-year-old's physical strength and a eleven-year-old's chakra reserves to help her.

Once she gets Naruto back, she's going to _kill_ him. Him and Sasuke too, just to keep things fair between them.

Maybe it was a mistake to changing things this early, to start trying to befriend them both from the get-go. If it's already affecting things this much, then what might be next—will they even get to be Team Seven this time? Will Kakashi still be their teacher, will he even bother to pass them?

But... even with her heart beating a frantic pattern in her ribcage as she crouches here in the shadow of a tree, even preparing to put her life on the line against four opponents no normal eleven-year-old could face, she can't bring herself to regret it. They're her team. Her _friends_. She's not about to let them suffer when she can help them instead. If that means more enemies coming her way, so be it. She'll kill them all.

Sakura digs into her pouch. Three kunai, standard issue, plus another two blunted training kunai, five similarly-blunted shuriken, and a trio of explosive tags she stole from a training ground when the chunin practicing on it left them behind.

It's... not a great haul, all told. But, eyeing up her opponents, their hip pouches full of tags and leg holsters with kunai strapped tight, she starts to get an idea of where she can get more.

Explosive tags out, all three tied tight to one of the blunt training shuriken; in her other hand, one of her few precious sharpened kunai. It feels huge in her child's fist, almost comically oversized—even with a month's time in this body, she still isn't used to just how _small_ she used to be. Here, though, surrounded by looming trees and overgrown grass, her size and her small reserves are going to be the only advantage she has, the edge she desperately needs.

Sakura weaves a genjutsu around the blunted kunai. Nothing complex or chakra-intensive, the sort of thing even a genin might know—rather than disguising the attack, the genjutsu makes it bigger, louder, far more threatening than it has any right to be. 

_Look at me,_ it's going to scream. _Don't think about anything else_.

She takes a deep breath, lets her meagre chakra settle until she's barely a shadow—and throws.

It's a clumsy throw; if she were aiming anywhere in particular, she definitely would have missed. But lobbed soft and off-kilter like that, blaring _pay attention to me_ , her shuriken doesn't need good aim. It punches into the soft bark of a tree growing between the two shinobi's positions with a noise that seems as loud as a thunderclap, as threatening as a charging army. Even Sakura's heart races when she hears it, and she's the one who made it sound that way.

"What the hell?" snarls one of the shinobi. He body flickers to it faster than any academy student's eyes could follow, yanks it out of the wood to examine the sudden threat as his partner takes up a defensive position beside him—

Sakura makes a hand sign. 

The tag explodes.

The detonation echoes through the clearing, sending a flock of birds into the air. Their harsh, panicked cries mix with the lingering rumble of the explosion—and, beyond that, barely audible, a _crack_ and a wet, meaty sort of thump. 

Sakura doesn't have to flare her chakra to know what happened. The sound of a body hitting the ground is the most familiar thing in the world to her.

One down, three to go, and one of them in the clearing still. Confused, disoriented—easy pickings. These shinobi can't be jounin, she thinks, stumbling as she dashes towards the man still in the clearing on a child's clumsy legs, looking at the way he's doubled over with his hands clasped to his ears. Chunin, maybe, or a single near-retired jounin and his students. Not the sort of people she'd expect to see on a mission like this.

Was this an attack of opportunity, unsanctioned by the Raikage? Or—her eyes narrow—were they never meant to make it out alive after all? She'd assumed the missing-nin disguise was obvious, something anyone would see through, but... this isn't a time of peace. She's quite possibly the only Konoha shinobi alive who's ever been able to sit side-by-side with Kumo and Kiri ambassadors both, who's walked the trails of Hidden Cloud and seen how 

The clearing smells of smoke and choking ash. Maybe three tags was overkill. She'd expected these two to be more resilient. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter; she throws herself at the second shinobi's still hunched-over body, wraps her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, clings to him like a monkey.

He thrashes, panicked, hands fighting to come together for some sort of jutsu. Her first swing of the kunai goes wild, scoring a shallow line across his cheek. The second finds its way home.

Her strike pierces the eye socket and keeps going, sending a gush of blood and fluids splashing out over her hand as she sinks it deeper, deeper, deeper—

The shinobi groans weakly, lifting a hand to scrabble at the hilt of the kunai. She hold on until his struggles grow weaker, until his bent-over posture turns to him falling hands-and-knees into the thick grass. He kneels there a moment, almost dazed, like he can't believe he's lost. Then, with a quiet sort of sigh, he collapses beside his comrade.

His breathing stills. His chakra flickers out. Sakura yanks the kunai from his skull, sending another gush of foul-smelling fluids out across her hand, and tries to wipe it and her fingers clean against the back of his thick jacket.

"Urgh," she mutters to herself, wrinkling her nose. Her mind might be used to this, but her body definitely isn't—the stench is _awful_ , so much worse than she was expecting, and she has to kneel against the ground for a moment to stop her legs from shaking.

As soon as she can move again, she starts rummaging through the dead shinobi's pockets. His tanto is far too big for her to use competently, but he has _proper_ shuriken, and kunai, and more explosive tags.

Sakura begins shoving them all into her pockets as quickly as she can, pulsing her chakra once more as she does. 

"Damn," she mutters. The remaining two shinobi—and Naruto with them—are already far further away than they were before her attack. Apparently they decided to cut and run the moment they heard the first explosion. So much for team loyalty.

It's not going to be easy to catch up to them. Sakura has chakra enough to tree walk, or water walk, but her legs are far shorter than either of the people she's pursuing and if she burns her chakra to speed herself up she won't have any less to use against them. 

Sakura frowns, staring down at the corpses like they might have an answer for her. She needs a plan, and she needs it soon, and—

There's a rustle behind her, barely audible, more a shift in the air than anything else. The sound of a weapon being drawn.

Sakura throws herself forward, twisting, bringing her gore-stained kunai up—and it's knocked from her hand in a moment, as her wrist is twisted painfully behind her back and a sharp blade is pressed to the base of her throat. A moment ago, there were no chakra signatures but hers and her targets for miles around; now, her attacker's flares up like a fire, fierce and heavy with killing intent, and achingly, overwhelmingly familiar. 

She twists to catch a glimpse of her new opponent, desperate to confirm what her instincts already know.

"Oh," she says. "Kakashi!"

She knows that mask. And she knows the silver-white shock of hair sticking out above it even better.

She relaxes into the grip. Kakashi is here, she's not alone, she doesn't have to do this all by herself...

The blade on her neck presses closer, enough to draw a thin line of blood across her neck.

Right, she realizes, reality coming rushing back in. _Right._ Kakashi is here—and Kakashi doesn't know who she is, or why she's here, or how an eleven-year-old is out at the Konoha border at two in the morning standing over the bodies of two dead shinobi.

"I was already curious," murmurs a voice that only barely resembles her teacher's, made strange by the cold malice threaded through it, "why a little kid like you would be out alone in a place like this. And now you've just made me even more curious, saying a name like that."

"Ah," she says. A sudden sweat breaks out along her spine. She's all too aware of just how easily she might die right here, killed by someone she trusts more than life itself. "I'm—I'm a Konoha citizen. An academy student."

"Yes. I remember your hair."

She flushes. Of course he does, the weirdo; he's probably been stalking Naruto and Sasuke for months now, trying to figure out whether he's going to train them or not. She wishes now she'd taken the risk of getting his attention back then.

"And... I'm Naruto's friend. We were playing in the woods, and someone grabbed him!"

"Yes, I'd heard about that. All of Konoha's out looking for him."

 _Damn,_ Sakura thinks. So the first option is sounding most likely after all. Maybe she really has messed everything up by following after Naruto's kidnappers.

"Oh. Well, I didn't know if anyone else knew, so—"

"So you just happened to follow his trained, adult kidnappers for hours, across dangerous terrain? And just happened to kill two of them?"

A long pause, neither of them speaking.

"You can cut the little girl act," Kakashi continues, his voice thick with a fake, syrupy sweetness. "I'm more curious about who you really are, hm? And what you're really here to do."

Sakura frowns. If she trusts him, will he return that trust? Or will this be in the ears of the Hokage—and, with him, Danzou—the moment she tries to explain?

It's hard to guess. This isn't the Kakashi she knows anymore—he's a younger version of himself, caught between the wounded, bitter soldier he used to be and the man she knows he'll become. Sakura doesn't know what he might be thinking, under those layers of masks, what he might suspect about her.

But if that's the case, it leaves her with only a single option.

"My name is Haruno Sakura," she says, slowly. "I'm an academy student in Konoha, training to be a shinobi. I like flowers, and the color pink, and learning new things. And as for what I'm here to do"—she lets the fear leak from her voice for a moment, lets herself sound like the shinobi she really is—"I'm going to protect Naruto, and Uchiha Sasuke, and you too, Kakashi-sensei—no matter what it takes. And the rest of Konoha as well, if I can manage it.

"Kakashi-sensei..?" he asks, taken aback, and then, "And the rest of Konoha, if you can manage it? You've got interesting priorities, for a kid."

Already he sounds a little more like the man she knows. It makes some of the knot of tension inside her chest ease.

"I've got interesting information, too," she tells him. "And I'll talk to you—but after Naruto's safe, okay? I'll explain it all. Those Kumo-nin are going to be doing a hand-off soon."

"Kumo?" His voice is sharp as glass.

Right, she'd almost forgotten. "They're not really from Kiri. I'm sure of it. I can explain that too."

He eyes her through the mask a moment longer, inscrutable. Then, he sighs, and the knife pressed to her neck retreats. 

"You're right," he says, "they definitely aren't." With a teasing lilt to his voice, he adds, "You're a little scary, aren't you, Haruno-san? I'm surprised you realized that yourself."

"Scary?" Sakura scoffs as she runs her hand against the scrape on her neck. She'd like to close it up, but she doesn't have enough chakra anymore to make it worth the waste. It's not a deep cut. It'll heal. "Says the man who was holding a knife to a child's neck."

"Well, you _are_ a pretty scary kid. I saw what you did to those two."

"And you didn't even help me? So mean." Sakura turns to him, grins, and says, "I know how you can make it up to me, though."

"Oh?"

She lifts her arms up. "Would you? My legs are short and I'm tired of walking."

Kakashi grumbles, and makes more than one muttered comment about what exactly she's seen her do to people who leave their necks exposed around her, but he lets her clamber up onto his back without much complaint. And when he bursts into motion with a flicker so quick the world slows around them, everything suddenly feels more familiar: the scent of blood and viscera and Kakashi's favorite cheap laundry soap in her nostrils, the shadowed forest racing by, a chakra that says _friend_ surrounding her and another far ahead. 

If she closes her eyes and doesn't look at her too-small hands, this could be any of a hundred missions: Naruto racing forward without a care in the world, Kakashi calm and cheerful at her side, Sasuke no doubt lurking somewhere nearby. All of them focused on the same target, the same mission. 

And this isn't that, not yet, but—she'll have that back someday, no matter what. And this time around, she won't let anyone take it from her.

Sakura closes her eyes, focuses her chakra on Naruto's ahead, and settles in against Kakashi to wait for the next fight.


End file.
